Thankful for Molly

I know, I know, it's been forever since I've blogged. I've just been so busy this past summer and fall. At first I thought I would blog from my phone more often but even that got away from me. I do have lots of pictures to post and now that the days are shorter, I'm hoping to catch up. Remember if you sign up for the email on the right hand side, my new posts will be delivered right to your inbox. Of all the things I have lined up, I thought I'd start with some news about Molly. Most folks who see me often already know about Molly burning up a few of her lives this fall, but many don't and I have some nice pictures of her. So here is a picture of Molly taken in late September after about three weeks of recovering from major surgery.

You can see her shaved patch on her neck. She was actually meowing has she was yawning, but it looks like a little roar. So we are all thankful that Molly is with us this Thanksgiving and especially thankful for Dr. Charles Wingfield and his staff (Betsy, Shirley, and all the others) who took such good care of Molly, no matter how grouchy she was post surger. You would never know it to look at her now, but she was quite sick in August.

All summer Molly was throwing up a lot and we thought she had hairball issues. But in late August, she wasn't responding to medication so I boarded her at Dr. Wingfield's hoping they could get more medicine in her. Giving tortoiseshell cats medicine is a dicey proposition. She is cute, but she's very hard to treat or put in a carrier. Dr. Wingfield discovered two things as they boarded her, that she had a super rare parasite from eating a beetle that had it. Then an ex-ray revealed she had something really big in her stomach. The most obvious thing would be a hairball and huge hairball removal is a fairly standard operation.

But there has never been anything standard about Molly and when Dr. Charlie did the surgery, it wasn't a hairball but a big tumor in between her stomach and small intestine. So he removed it and sewed her up and I thought okay, a nasty surprise but she'll be okay. A day after the surgery I got a call. Tortitude, is what they call it (look it up on google.) Molly was so mad and depressed that she wasn't eating or drinking or letting anyone pet her. So the next day I had to go in and hand feed her and perk her up. By the end of the day I could bring her home and I put her by herself in the guest room so recover. I was particularly worried about her because I had to go out of town a few days for work and Andrew was working a lot that week and I was worried about her. When I got back, Molly had developed an infection, so another trip to Dr. Wingfield's. We got medicine and then for the next three, count 'em three weeks, Dad came and helped me give her medicine. She is so smart thought, I had to go into the room first and wrap her in a towel before Dad could come in the room. Luckily we just had to do it once a day.

Molly's only 7 and we aren't ready to give her up yet. Dr. Wingfield told me he's seen animals with tumors like the one she had live for years and torties are known for their longevity. So thank you Dr. Wingfield!